


A Quiet Celebration

by AnguaMarten



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 03:45:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnguaMarten/pseuds/AnguaMarten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riza spends her birthday alone, as usual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Quiet Celebration

It's her birthday.

She's twelve today. Twelve is an awful age. Too young to do anything, but old enough to want to.

She's sitting alone in her bedroom. The walls are wood and the floor is wood and the windows are thick with dust, no matter how often she cleans them. The room is bare and dry, and she can't help but notice that it feels more like a box than anything. There are a few books—old, they were her mother's—and a few photos—mostly of her mother—but Riza isn't reading, or remembering, or doing anything at all. She's not even really seeing her surroundings (granted, she does know them pretty well. She spends almost all of her free time alone, in here).

It's her birthday, and Riza isn't quite sure what she expected. It would be foolish to wish for balloons and confetti and a huge fondanty cake with her name on it. To be honest, she's a little annoyed with herself, for expecting anything at all. It's just that in all of the books she's read, where the heroine is a motherless girl with a distant father, and it's her birthday… well, something ought to happen. Some awkward but sincere display of affection, or a gift of something that had belonged to her mom. Everything could go back to normal afterwards, but on your birthday, people should at least pretend that you're special.

The kids at school occupy her mind, briefly, before she dismisses them as so completely unrelated to her situation they may as well be living on the moon. Still, she can't help but note that they probably get a hell of a lot more in terms of recognition on their birthdays.

Riza will grudgingly admit that her home life is unusual, but not to any of the kids in her class, who whisper about her and treat her like some kind of curiosity, there for their entertainment. She lives alone with her father in a rambling, crumbling manor on the very edge of a spit-smudge town. She cooks for herself—hell, she grows her own vegetables and hunts her own rabbits with the old musket. She barely even sees her father. She takes him his meals and washes his clothes—both admittedly sporadic occasions—but beyond that, he stays in his study.

He's working on some new kind of alchemy, she knows that much. It's scary to see him like that, half-mad and muttering to himself, so she avoids him if she can help it.

It's turning into evening outside. Riza can spend increasingly long amounts of time not doing anything. She finds it almost too easy to sit back inside her head. Everything else sort of dulls itself out and she can think and be alone.

Sometimes, though, she's tired of alone. She's tired of quiet. She's tired of peaceful introspection. Riza wishes something would happen, or change, or explode.

She wishes she weren't terrified of her father.

She wishes she had a friend.

Happy birthday.

**Author's Note:**

> I mentally set this shortly before Roy comes to study with the Hawkeyes. In case that wasn't obvious.


End file.
